For my $.02: in my BigLaw experience, this day and week paled in comparison to the year-end assistant’s gift, and a card + flowers presentation from the numerous people sharing a secretary was more than fine. As we noted in our last poll, the vast majority of people gave less than $50. Don’t discount the floral/balloon display as part of the gift, though — I’ve always thought that part of this holiday is about broadcasting to the world (and your higher ups) that YES, you remembered the holiday, and YES, you are capable of ordering flowers for your assistant without his or her assistance.

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Readers, how much are you spending on your administrative assistant or secretary this week (cash plus gift)? What gift are you getting him or her? In general, what kind of things do you delegate to your assistant?

Comments

I am planning to take Lynn out to Lunch at the CELLAR in Macy’s. She love’s PASTA and they make a GREAT Garlic Penne Pasta. Now that she is dateing Mason, she doesn’t care that much about her wieght, so she is up for the PASTA. I want to spend a littel time alone with her (away from Mason), since they seem to be liveing together, I think at Mason’s apartement. I can tell b/c she is the one that OFTEN does NOT come in with fresh clotheing, haveing spent the nite before at HIS place. I have to warn her not to get to lazy yet, b/c he has NOT yet agreed to marry her. I found out she is NOT pregenent yet b/c she was complaieneing about her period so you can NOT be pregenent and have that also. That is a good thing b/c Mason is way to young to father a child, tho I am NOT. FOOEY!

I’d say no. Would you want a CLE for your Christmas bonus or birthday? I sure wouldn’t. If I got that when I was an admin I’d feel like my boss was saying, “you kind of suck, here’s something to get better.”

A gift card to a restaurant, Amazon, or iTunes is usually good for male or female assistants. One of my colleagues once gave his male admin a case of beer the day after admin day because the assistant had received flowers along with all of the female admins. According to my coworker that was “just wrong.”

Flowers plus a Visa or Amex gift card. This year I’m going to spend $100, evenly split between the two, which is more than I have spent in the past because I’m going it alone rather than splitting it with the other associates, and the price of the floral arrangement seems to have increased. I’ve never seen my assistant eat or drink anything that would give me an idea of her preferences, so I can’t do something like a Starbucks or restaurant gift card.

Gah. I hate this holiday. I hated it when I was a secretary (way back in the Dark Ages when we had IBM Selectric typewriters) and I hate it now. My feeling was always “How about we give fair compensation for the job, and forego the Hallmark holiday?”

Mercifully, the culture in my current position is in accord with that view. I go pretty nuts at the end of the year and I am confident my staff feels very appreciated indeed.

The partner I share with is recommending we take our assistant out for lunch. I can’t imagine she wants to eat with us. We’re all friendly, but certainly not the kind of friends that would hang out after work or anything like that. Do others do this? How is it received?

This is a big tradition at my firm. It seems to be a little more fun for the assistants when attorneys team up (so instead of two or three lawyers taking out their assistant, five lawyers might collectively take out two assistants) because it blunts the “eating lunch with my bosses” awkwardness.

Gov’t attorney. I have a paralegal to myself and then an assistant I share with the big boss. I ordered flowers for each of them (we’re splitting the cost on the assistant), sending them to a professional development breakfast, and then I’ll take them out to lunch. I’ll probably end up spending $75 or so on each of them, which I am fine with because they make my work life 1000x easier every day.

When I was an ass’t. I *hated* the flowers (and thank god, it never occurred to my boss to get a balloon) and card because it seemed so incredibly patronizing. That said, I absolutely did spent the amex gift cards!

Realized (per above) that part of the reason I thought it was so awful was that I had to do the expense allocation & reporting of the purchase of the flowers, card, and gift card. Please don’t do that to your ass’t. It’s rude, really.

I came up with a really thoughtful gift for my paralegal last year. This year, though, I’m in the middle of a promising interview (somewhere I’ve already worked) and don’t really want to go through the effort if I’m leaving. Wrong of me? Just lazy?